City Research Online

Abstract

In recent years plasmonic devices have become an interesting area of research due to the sub-wavelength confinement and propagation of radiation, allowing the design of very compact structures. Compact structures are necessary to make smaller integrated optical circuits. Due to the use of metals, plasmonic guides usually show more losses compared to the conventional dielectric guides. Therefore, plasmonic waveguides are not normally used for long distance transmission. However, they are promising for inter-chip or intra-chip communication and also have seen a lot of sensor applications.

There has been considerable interest in exploiting the frequency bands in the terahertz regime to open up new frontiers of research across a diverse range of applications. An array of opportunities for creating novel technologies using this frequency band had remained largely unexplored and undeveloped for a considerable period of time due to the lack of suitable sources, as well as lack of guiding and detecting devices.

This thesis describes the design, analysis and optimisation of plasmonic devices in optical and terahertz frequencies. A fully vectorial H-field based finite element method has been used in the research reported in this thesis to reveal the modal characteristics of different plasmonic structures.

A six layer planar contra-directional nano-coupler has been analysed at optical frequency. Three different modes of propagation were considered to study the characteristics of different properties of the structure, including the coupling length. A design approach has been proposed to make the coupler low loss as well as smaller in length.

For the terahertz plasmonics, a rectangular metallic hollow core guide was considered at terahertz frequency. Several modes were considered for the modal analysis of the structure. Modal analysis was performed by changing metal, introducing different dielectric coating in the hollow core, changing the thickness of the metal and dielectric layers and changing the dimensions of the guide. A dispersion analysis was also performed. The criteria for designing very low loss, compact and low dispersion guide have been presented for the structure at the end of the study.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Engineering Doctoral Theses School of Science & Technology > School of Science & Technology Doctoral Theses

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